Ganna Storms to a Fifth Italian Time Trial Title in Florence as Europe's Championship Week Begins
Filippo Ganna reaffirmed his status as Italy's pre-eminent rider against the clock, powering to a fifth national time trial title on the streets of Florence and serving notice that he arrives at the Tour de France in formidable form. The Ineos Grenadiers star covered the 35-kilometre course in 39 minutes and 17 seconds, an average speed of 53.6km/h, to underline once again that on a flat, fast parcours he remains in a class of his own.
His closest challenger was old rival and frequent training partner Edoardo Affini of Visma-Lease a Bike, who finished 24 seconds adrift. Affini, himself a world-class tester who had just been named to Visma's Tour squad, could find no answer to Ganna's sustained power, the gap opening steadily through the technical city-centre sections and never closing on the longer drags out of town.
It is the fifth time Ganna has pulled on the tricolore time trial jersey, leaving him just one short of the all-time Italian record of six. For a rider whose 2026 has already featured a dominant stage 10 time trial victory at the Giro d'Italia, the win in Florence is further confirmation that the Piedmontese remains the benchmark for the discipline in his home country, and one of the few men capable of challenging the very best in the world on the right day.
The result carries particular weight given the timing. National championship week falls in the narrow window the UCI carves out before the Tour, allowing the world's leading riders to return home and contest their domestic titles. For Ganna, the jersey is both a prestige prize and a sharpening exercise: he will line up in Barcelona on 4 July as a key engine for Ineos and a contender for any time trial opportunities the route presents, even if the 2026 Tour offers a meagre 26 kilometres of individual racing against the clock.
Ganna was not the only headline winner as the time trial titles were decided across the continent. Norway's Tobias Foss and Luxembourg's Bob Jungels were among the other national champions crowned in the same window, both adding to Ineos Grenadiers' growing collection of tricolore jerseys ahead of the Grand Départ. For a team that has rebuilt its identity around time trial firepower, the haul is a timely morale boost.
Attention now turns to the road races, with the elite men's and women's national titles set to be decided across Europe this weekend. Italy, Belgium, France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Spain will all crown new champions in the days before the peloton converges on Catalonia, the last meaningful racing many of the Tour's protagonists will do before the biggest event of the year gets underway.